PPCC-Pisitófilos Creditófagos-Otoño 2021

[Derby]

https://www.tker.co/p/inflation-versus-deflation-blankfein

There are worse things than inflation

Former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein explains

In an interview that aired on Bloomberg on Wednesday, former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein articulated the simple, troubling difference between inflation and deflation.

There's a lot of remedies in the world – painful as they are – for inflation. It's very hard to get rid of deflation. If you had to err on one side or another, you would err on allowing a certain amount of inflation to take place…

Deflation is a terrible thing. Inflation, you could tolerate. I mean it's bad; I can go through all the things and how unevenly Inflation affects different segments of the population. But it's easier to deal [with]. Again, with inflation, you go out and you buy things now because it's gonna get more expensive. When you have deflationary expectations, you say, “You know something? I’ll wait for tomorrow.” Tomorrow, you wake up you say, “I’ll wait another day because it's getting cheaper and easier,” etcetera … Then you really are in the economic doldrums.

If the price of something is expected to go up, then people may buy early and even hoard goods amid an inflationary psychology. All that extra purchasing leads to shortages. When there are fewer goods to sell despite surging demand, prices go up. The result is a self-fulfilling cycle.

But when spending is running amok and inflation accelerates, entities like the Federal Reserve can come in and introduce tighter monetary policy, causing interest rates to rise and eventually limiting the economy’s ability to continue frenzied purchases of stuff.

Demand and supply gravitate back toward some equilibrium, and prices cool off.(...)

[Cadavre Exquis]

Me alegra ver que no estoy sólo.

Me pongo el gorro de papel en la cabeza y suelto mi teoría del viernes.

1. Evergrande está al borde del default pero todavía no se hace público. Amenaza con llevarse por delante a inversores locales y extranjeros. He buscado y rebuscado cuál es la exposición de bancos y empresas americanas pero no he encontrado nada definitivo. Imagino que muchos millones de dólares.
2. Posibles contactos a nivel empresarial o diplomático desde Estados Unidos al Partido Comunista para explicarles "cómo se hacen las cosas en occidente" y "la importancia del estado rescatando empresas". El PCCh hace oídos sordos.
3. Se hace público y la prensa americana/anglosajona bombardeando con noticias diarias sobre el más que probable rescate del gobierno chino y anunciando el apocalipsis si no lo hacen.
4. El PCCh sigue sin darse por enterado y deja que la quiebra siga su curso (con sus cortafuegos y todo eso, pero sin parar la quiebra).
5. El tío Sam se cabrea de verdad y empieza a maniobrar en la sombra.
6. China lo sabe y se deja de sutilezas. Dispara un misil balístico intercontinental que sobrevuela Sidney (hola AUKUS) y se convierte en el primer país en hacer una prueba completa de un misil hipersónico (ojito a la prensa que ha pasado muy de puntillas sobre estos dos temas). Aviso a navegantes con un cartel de neon.

Estoy convencido de que esta es la última pieza de un puzle geostratégico que lleva años componiéndose. El AUKUS es otra pieza más.

Me quito el gorro de papel y me voy a por el tercer café de la mañana.

Al final parece que no fue uno, sino dos, el número de "tests" que hicieron:

China Conducted Two Hypersonic Weapons Tests this Summer
Posted by msmash on Friday October 22, 2021 @03:25PM from the closer-look dept.

The Chinese military conducted two hypersonic weapons tests over the summer, raising US concerns that Beijing is gaining ground in the race to develop a new generation of arms. Financial Times:

On July 27 the Chinese military launched a rocket that used a "fractional orbital bombardment" system to propel a nuclear-capable "hypersonic glide vehicle" around the earth for the first time, according to four people familiar with US intelligence assessments. The Financial Times this week reported that the first test was in August, rather than at the end of July. China subsequently conducted a second hypersonic test on August 13, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Three people familiar with the first test in July said it stunned the Pentagon and US intelligence because China managed to demonstrate a brand new weapons capability, although they declined to elaborate on the details. One person said government scientists were struggling to understand the capability, which the US does not currently possess, adding that China's achievement appeared "to defy the laws of physics." Space and missile experts have been debating the Chinese test since the FT revealed the event at the weekend. Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear weapons expert at Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, said China appeared to have developed a new innovation, but stressed the need to maintain a degree of scepticism. "We should be open to the reality that China is also capable of technological innovation," he said.

Saludos.

[Derby]

https://cincodias.elpais.com/cincodias/2021/10/22/mercados/1634892801_196761.html

Von der Leyen: 'Europa estudiará crear una reserva estratégica de gas y hacer compras conjuntas'

La Presidenta de la Comisión Europea ha afirmado que el bloque actuará para poder evitar futuras crisis en el sector de la energía en el mediano plazo y largo plazo

La presidenta de la Comisión Europea, Ursula Von der Leyen, ha afirmado este viernes que Europa explorará la posibilidad de crear una reserva estratégica de gas y de hacer compras conjuntas. Después de reunirse con los líderes de los 27 en Bruselas, Von der Leyen ha asegurado que Europa actuará para poder evitar futuras crisis energéticas en el mediano plazo y largo plazo. La jefa del ejecutivo europeo ha añadido que también se priorizarán la energía eólica y solar, pero que en el gas y la energía nuclear se utilizarán durante la transición.

“Para incrementar nuestra independencia y resistencia, hemos acordado explorar como establecer una reserva estratégica de energía y las posibilidad de hacer compras conjuntas. Intensificaremos nuestro contacto con los diferentes proveedores para diversificar nuestro suministro y tenemos que acelerar el trabajo de interconexiones”, ha afirmado Von der Leyen, que también ha añadido que mientras la energía solar, eólica y nuclear son producidas dentro del bloque, el 90% del gas es importado. En este sentido, la presidenta ha añadido que Europa debe evaluar si el sistema de subastas eléctricas es eficiente al abarcar todas las fuentes de energía de manera conjunta.(...)

[Derby]

https://www.thelykeion.com/the-european-energy-crisis/

The European Energy Crisis

This crisis centers on the intersection of bad weather for wind energy generation and decades of poor policy planning.

Where We Stand Today

*The EU imports 60% of its consumed energy. In 2000 it imported 56%. Europe is seeing declining production of fossil fuel energy, whilst at the same time, it's increasing energy imports whose source is predominantly fossil fuel-based. In fact, Natural Gas imports more than doubled since 1990 to become the second-largest imported energy product after crude oil.

*Europe is leading the energy transition race, but this also means that it currently finds itself overly dependent on production from unreliable energy sources like wind. Whilst we cannot control the weather (meaning that wind and solar will always be somewhat unreliable), there are several levers we can pull to minimize the risk of energy shortfalls, with two primary candidates being improved energy storage systems and nuclear.

*Renewable policy bears have been highlighting the risks of blindly transitioning away from reliable fossil fuel energy sources into weather-dependent renewables for a while now. And for good reason, fossil fuels – supply chains allowing – are still the most reliable source of energy we have. We'll continue to see decommissioning of fossil fuel energy sources while ignoring one incredibly important factor – the time it will take to get all that renewable capacity to match the decommissioned fossil fuel dependency.

*S&P Platts (provider of energy info) puts it clearly, with a German example – from 2020 to 2026, Germany will go from a net exporter of 19TWh of energy to a net importer of 55TWh due to the decommissioning of nuclear and coal sources.

*While that's a common trend across European countries, France, with its nuclear-intensive grid, will instead almost double its net exporting capacity from 46 TWh to 84 TWh. Even though this is a concern for many countries that are decommissioning coal and nuclear, we see it as potentially the right approach to ensure a smooth transition from a fossil-fuel-based to a renewable-based society.

[saturno]

https://www.thelykeion.com/the-european-energy-crisis/

[
*S&P Platts (provider of energy info) puts it clearly, with a German example – from 2020 to 2026, Germany will go from a net exporter of 19TWh of energy to a net importer of 55TWh due to the decommissioning of nuclear and coal sources.

*While that's a common trend across European countries, France, with its nuclear-intensive grid, will instead almost double its net exporting capacity from 46 TWh to 84 TWh. Even though this is a concern for many countries that are decommissioning coal and nuclear, we see it as potentially the right approach to ensure a smooth transition from a fossil-fuel-based to a renewable-based society.

Dudo mucho que FR multiplique por 2 la producción nuclear para suministrar a Alemania, Están delirando.
Las centrales de FR están en fin de vida y paradas técnicas (por la prensa, no sé más).
Se oyen voces de que los alemanes se van a morder los dedos en pocos años.  En Alemania empiezan a reaccionar también

Luego está que la liberalizacion de los contratos de electricas privadas van camino de ser todos revertidos a la Cia nacional, por las subidas de precios. La energia no es una cotizacion de Bolsa,

A eso súmale la politica del coche electrico. Que no tiene recorrido porque no hay energia electrica suficiente, El único cambio que quedará será la peatonalización de ciudades, Pero la gente que va a trabajar no va a ir en bicleta, El PS galo (la alcaldesa de Paris) corre riesgo de quedar por debajo de la barra del 5% y no tiene visos de aspirar a la presidencia, La izquierda luminosa y woke se están derrumbando, Borrada del mapa electoral,

Intentaré fijarme  en la politica eléctrica de FR a ver si traigo datos

[Derby]

https://www.reuters.com/article/china-economy-property-tax/update-1-china-to-pilot-property-tax-scheme-in-some-regions-xinhua-idUSL1N2RJ05C

China to pilot property tax scheme in some regions -Xinhua

SHANGHAI (Reuters) -The top decision-making body of the Chinese parliament said on Saturday it will roll out a pilot real estate tax in some regions, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

The State Council, or Cabinet, will determine which regions will be involved and other details, Xinhua added.

The long-mooted and long-resisted property tax has gained new momentum since President Xi Jinping threw his support behind what experts describe as one of the most profound changes to China’s real estate policies in a generation.

A tax could help red-hot home prices that have soared more than more than 2,000% since the privatisation of the housing market in the 1990s and created an affordability crisis in recent years.

But talk of the plan is coming at a sensitive time, as the property market is showing significant signs of stress and home prices have started falling in tens of cities.

The tax will apply to residential and non-residential property as well as land and property owners, but does not apply to legally owned rural land or where residences are built on it, Xinhua said.

The pilot schemes will last five years from the issue of the details from the State Council.

The idea of a levy on home owners first surfaced in 2003 but has failed to take off due to concerns that it would damage property demand, home prices, household wealth and future real estate projects.

It has faced resistance from stakeholders including local governments, who fear it would erode property values or trigger a market sell-off.

Over 90% of households own at least one home, the central bank said last year.

But analysts say the tax will bring in much needed revenue.

“Land sales are not a sustainable source of government revenue any more,” Capital Economics said in a note on Friday. “Gradual implementation should also mitigate fears that a tax could cause prices to crash.”

In pilot programmes rolled out in 2011, the megacities of Shanghai and Chongqing taxed homeowners, albeit just those possessing higher-end housing and second homes, at rates from 0.4% to 1.2%.

But until now the pilot programmes have not been widened to more cities.

Analysts expect a wider pilot to first include wealthier and economically more diversified regions in eastern and southern China such as the provinces of Zhejiang and Guangdong.

“It is expected that Zhejiang is likely to be included in the reform, especially Hangzhou,” said Yan Yuejin, director of Shanghai-based E-house China Research and Development Institution.

Hangzhou, the base of e-commerce giant Alibaba, is China’s eighth-richest city, with economic output reaching 1.61 trillion yuan ($252 billion) last year, about 70% of Hong Kong’s gross domestic product.

[Derby]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/22/opinion/china-bubble-economy.html

https://dnyuz.com/2021/10/22/is-china-in-big-trouble/

Is China in Big Trouble?, Paul Krugman

These are scary times in America, with one of our major parties careening into authoritarianism and the other having difficulty moving forward thanks to two uncooperative senators. Most of what I write, inevitably, focuses on the troubled prospects for our republic. But everyone needs a break. So today I want to talk about a happier topic: The risks of an economic crisis in China.

OK, not exactly happier. But a change in subject, anyway.

Warnings about the Chinese economy aren’t new — but until now the worriers, myself included, have been consistently wrong. Back in 2013 I suggested that China’s growth model was becoming unsustainable, and that its economy might be about to hit a Great Wall; obviously that didn’t happen.

Yet the more closely you look at how China has been able to keep its economy going, the more problematic it looks. Basically, China has masked underlying imbalances by creating an immense housing bubble. And it’s hard to see how this ends well.

The background: The reforms introduced by Deng Xiaoping at the end of the 1970s created an economic miracle. China, which was desperately poor, is now a middle-income nation, and given its size, that makes it an economic superpower. But China’s economic growth has been gradually slowing. Here’s a five-year moving average of the country’s growth rate:

There’s nothing mysterious about this slowdown. China was able to achieve incredibly rapid growth through a combination of technological borrowing from more advanced nations and a huge transfer of population from rural areas to cities. As its technological sophistication grew and the reservoir of rural labor shrank, growth was bound to slow. In addition, the one-child policy gave China the kind of demography we usually associate with richer countries: The working-age population peaked a few years ago and is now shrinking:

In and of themselves, slower growth and a demographic transition needn’t imply a crisis. But here’s the problem: Chinese spending patterns haven’t adjusted to the needs of a slower-growth economy. In particular, the country still has a very high savings rate, so to maintain full employment it needs to invest an incredibly high share of G.D.P. — more than 40 percent.

What drives investment? Normally, it depends a lot on how fast the economy is growing: growth is what creates a demand for new factories, office buildings, shopping malls and so on. So very high investment as a share of G.D.P. is sustainable if the economy is growing at 9 or 10 percent a year. If growth drops to 3 or 4 percent, however, the returns on investment drop. That’s why China really needs to change its economic mix — to save less and consume more.

But Chinese savings have stayed stubbornly high — and yes, excessive saving is an economic problem.

A few years ago a study from the International Monetary Fund tried to explain high Chinese savings. It suggested that the biggest culprit was the same demographic transition that is one cause of slowing growth: A declining birthrate means that Chinese adults can’t expect their children to support them later in life, so they save a lot to prepare for retirement. This demographic factor is reinforced by the weakness of China’s social safety net: People can’t count on the government to support them in their later years or to pay for health care, so they feel the need to accumulate assets as a precaution.

Chinese policymakers know all this, but somehow haven’t been able to deal with these underlying issues. Instead, they’ve kept the rate of investment very high despite slowing growth — mainly by encouraging huge spending on housing construction. A 2020 paper by Kenneth Rogoff and Yuanchen Yang shows that Chinese investment in real estate now greatly exceeds U.S. levels at the height of the 2000s housing bubble, both in dollar terms and as a share of G.D.P.:

Rogoff and Yang also show both that housing prices in China are extremely high relative to incomes and that the real estate sector has become an incredibly large share of China’s economy.

None of this looks sustainable, which is why many observers worry that the debt problems of the giant property developer Evergrande are just the leading edge of a broader economic crisis.

I’ve already pointed out that until now China has been able to defy the doomsayers. So you might be tempted to give Chinese policymakers the benefit of the doubt, and assume that they’ll manage to deal with this situation. It turns out, however, that they haven’t really been dealing with their economy’s underlying problems, they’ve been masking those problems by creating a housing bubble that will ultimately magnify the problem.

But why should the rest of the world care? China, which maintains controls on the flow of capital into and out of the country, isn’t deeply integrated with world financial markets. So the fall of Evergrande isn’t likely to provoke a global financial crisis in the same way that the fall of Lehman Brothers did in 2008. A Chinese slowdown would have some economic spillover via reduced Chinese demand, especially for raw materials. But in purely economic terms, the global economic risks from China’s problems don’t look all that large.

China does, however, have an autocratic government — the kind of government that in other times and places has tended to respond to internal problems by looking for an external enemy. And China is also a superpower. It’s not hard to tell scary stories about where all this might lead.

And with that, I return you to your regular worries about what’s going on in the United States.

[Derby]

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/supply-shortages-inflation-result-of-government-policies-by-john-h-cochrane-2021-10

The Revenge of Supply

Policymakers should not have been caught off guard by surging prices and shortages of goods and labor. Practically the entire post-pandemic agenda is built around policies that stoke demand and discourage work, making supply-side constraints entirely predictable.

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/current-supply-shocks-and-2008-global-financial-crisis-by-diane-coyle-2021-10

The Great Supply-Chain Massacre

It is unclear whether current widespread product shortages are merely a temporary disruption or evidence of a global production meltdown. But today’s supply shocks offer striking parallels with the 2008 global financial crisis, and may require a similarly bold policy response.

(...) So, there are plenty of mental models for understanding the current shortage problem. The pressing challenge is how to restore stability and ease the shortages so that people are not facing a holiday season with no toys, turkeys, or gas.

A top priority is to have better data and better business intelligence in government. Even after 30 years of globalization, there is astonishingly little detailed, publicly available information on product flows in global supply chains. Ministries need to restore the kind of engineering-based industry knowledge that was more common back when industrial policy was considered a key government function.

But in the short term, decentralized markets and price signals are the problem, not the solution. Governments will need to step in – whether by deploying soldiers to drive gasoline tankers or providing production subsidies – to mitigate some of the shortages.

When the immediate supply concerns abate, firms and policymakers must consider what kind of insurance or slack they should build into the production system over the longer term. Just as banks needed to increase their equity buffers after 2008, we perhaps now need to step back from just-in-time production and redefine productivity in light of supply-chain risks.

[Derby]

https://ph.news.yahoo.com/french-push-to-classify-nuclear-power-green-and-sustainable-divides-europe-090009163.html

French push to classify nuclear power 'green and sustainable' divides Europe

(...)“The inclusion of nuclear” on the approved sustainable energy list “has been a subject of intense debate,” one EU official close to the matter told Yahoo News. “While nuclear energy is consistently acknowledged as a low-carbon energy source, opinions differ notably on the potential impact on other environmental objectives.” Those include the still-unsolved problem of how to dispose of radioactive waste, which may be hazardous for millennia.

That toxic legacy, along with nuclear power’s high startup costs, long construction times and notable risk factors from accidents to potential plots by terrorists, has convinced many analysts in Western Europe that new nuclear plants should be dropped from future energy programs, with investments instead going to renewables like wind and solar, new storage systems, retrofitting old buildings and readying the grid for electric vehicles.

“Nuclear energy is dead. It’s a technology from the last century that is over,” Jens Althoff, director of the Paris office of the German foundation Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, told Yahoo News. “The whole idea of climate protection is to not leave a heavy, problematic heritage to future generations. So why would you choose an energy that does exactly that?”

Raphael Hanoteaux, a senior policy adviser at the Brussels-based energy consultancy E3G, agrees that nuclear has too many drawbacks to be viable. “New nuclear doesn’t have a place in the net-zero framework,” he said. “Decarbonizing power can and should happen without nuclear, which pricewise is totally nonsense. Any new project of nuclear is going to be extremely expensive and won’t be online until the 2030s.” He added that “we have solar, we have wind, we have storage. And it’s cheaper than nuclear — and in 12 to 15 years it will be cheaper still.”

(...) Pellerin-Carlin agrees that perhaps not one energy formula fits all. “It makes no sense to close down nuclear plants in countries where the majority of people are fine with nuclear,” he said. The issue for him is when the reactors reach the end of their lifetimes, as is the case with much of the nuclear fleet in France. “The big question is, should we spend more public money to develop new reactors or to deploy new renewable energies?” he said, adding that energy investments should take into account the will of the residents. “Does nuclear have a place in the German, Austrian or Italian energy transitions? The answer is clearly no. But could nuclear have a place in countries like Slovakia or Hungary, where the populations are largely favorable to nuclear and there is very limited solar and wind capacity? Yes, absolutely.”

The nuclear issue nevertheless continues to divide those planning energy programs to address climate change. “Some think it’s great and very green,” said Jonathan Stern, distinguished fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. “Some people think it’s a disaster and point to Fukushima and Chernobyl. But the important thing to remember is even if countries go for nuclear, it won’t bear fruit for 10 years. And we’ve got so much to do before then.”

[Cadavre Exquis]

Ya hacía tiempo que Intel se estaba quedando atrás en la carrera por lograr fabricar los transistores más pequeños —TSMC es ahora mismo la que está más adelantada en ese aspecto— pero, tal y como llevamos viendo desde hace unos meses (y que vuelve a traer Derbi en un post anterior), si eso se suman cosas como la rotura de las cadenas de distribución pero, sobre todo, el hecho de los principales clientes de Intel (Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc.) estén empezando a diseñar sus propios chips, a Intel no le queda otra opción que reconvertirse y transformarse en una foundry tipo TSMC y centrase en la fabricanción de chips diseñados por sus clientes.

El menos esa es la nueva estrategia planteada para la compañia por su nuevo CEO Pat Gelsinger (que dio el relevo el 13 de enero de ese año 2021 a Bob Swan, que había accedio al puesto el 31 de enero de 2019).

Intel's Future Now Depends On Making Everyone Else's Chips
Posted by BeauHD on Friday October 22, 2021 @11:30PM from the it's-not-going-to-be-easy dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica, written by Tim De Chant:

Over the last year and a half, as the pandemic has everyone turned to their screens, demand has surged for devices (phones and laptops) and cloud services (Netflix and Zoom), all powered by a range of advanced semiconductors. Manufacturers have raced to squeeze more chips out of their fabs, but many were running near their limits before the pandemic. Still, Intel and its competitors didn't rush to build new fabs -- fabs are startlingly expensive, and without continued demand, semiconductor firms are loath to build more. But now, as the global pandemic continues to disrupt supply chains, chipmakers have decided that the current spike in demand isn't going away. Intel's $20 billion investment [to build two new chip factories in Chandler, Arizona] is only one example. Samsung announced in May that it would spend $151 billion over the next decade to boost its semiconductor capacity. TSMC made a similar announcement in April, pledging to invest $100 billion in the next three years alone.

The investments required to stay at the leading edge -- where the most advanced chips are made -- has whittled down the number of semiconductor competitors from more than 20 in 2001 to just two today. "There's really only so much room at the leading edge, just because of the huge capital costs involved," said Will Hunt, a research analyst at Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology. That cost is driven by the price of the equipment that's required to etch ever-smaller features onto chips. A few years ago, the industry began to use extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) to shrink transistor sizes. EUV machines are marvels of physics and engineering, and one tool costs upwards of $120 million. To stay relevant, companies will need to buy a dozen or more annually for the next several years. For those sorts of investments to make sense, semiconductor manufacturers must produce and sell an enormous volume of chips. "When you have volume orders, then you can do yield experiments, you can improve your yield, and yield is everything because that's how you cover your costs," said Willy Shih, a professor of management at Harvard Business School. Which is why Intel, under [Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger], is doing something now that it historically has shunned. "We are now a foundry," Gelsinger said at the Arizona groundbreaking. In the coming years, he said, Intel will "open the doors of our fab wide for the community at large to serve the foundry needs of our customers -- many of them US companies that are dependent on solely having foreign supply sources today."

But becoming a leading-edge foundry isn't just about building fabs and telling customers you've got space to make their chips. Gelsinger will have to change Intel's culture and, to some extent, its technology, both of which are deep-seated. "He has to turn a huge ship around," said Robert Maire, president of Semiconductor Advisors. In the coming years, Intel has several challenges to master at once. As the company rolls out a new business model, it also needs to redouble its R&D efforts while still being careful with cash flow. (Intel has fallen so far behind that it now plans to outsource production of its most advanced chips -- and a portion of the profits that accompany them -- to TSMC.) The transition will demand intense focus. "The foundry business could be a distraction," Shih said. At the same time, he added, Apple, Google, Amazon, and other companies are moving away from Intel's standardized chips toward their own customized designs. If Intel doesn't change with the times, it risks being left behind. "There will be many challenges, and there will be tests that will face them," Shih said. "It's going to be hard."

Saludos.

[inmoindultadoGenerico]

Con las correlaciones hay que tener mucho, mucho cuidado:



Un enlace muy divertido:

https://magnet.xataka.com/un-mundo-fascinante/a-margarina-divorcios-11-divertidos-ejemplos-que-correlacion-no-implica-causalidad

Me van a permitir mi desbarre mental en este punto. Hace tiempo que veo cosas como las de este post, intentando demostrar que correlación no implica causalidad.
El ejemplo paradigmatico es el que relaciona la pirateria en el caribe con las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero, que parece hacer ver que es una perogrullada de correlación.
Sin embargo, se podría pensar que la aparición de los barcos de vapor y fueloil y la industrialización de la fabricación de armamento SI tiene que ver con la desaparición de la pirateria en el caribe.
De la misma forma, se podrían encontrar sutiles relaciones incluso en la gráfica que nos trae berberecho (p. ej. efectos en el avance tecnológico & problemas sociales que llevan al suicidio)
En definitiva, que me voy con ojo descartando correlaciones porque en definitiva, si el rio suena agua lleva.

Gracias a todos!

[saturno]

En el spoiler pongo los gráficos del artículo de Krugman. Creo que el artículo es importante, pero en realidad Krugman está glosando otro artículo que cita al final,

Jim Chanos: China’s “Leveraged Prosperity” Model is Doomed. And That’s Not the Worst.
https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/jim-chanos-chinas-leveraged-prosperity-model-is-doomed-and-thats-not-the-worst

Y recomiendo leerlo, porque el modelo chino permite ver muy bien la intima relación que puede haber entre aparatos políticos y burbujas inmobiliarias.

Esa vinculacion, además, creo que el Maestro la subestima, o al menos no acaba de aislarla bien. La transición estructural, requiere tomar el control del Estado, que es en definitva la mano obrera del capital o del trabajo productivos, y permite distinguir modelos de "propiedad" privada y modelo de "propiedad" pública . Una burbuja inmobiliaria es lo que permite acumular capital del futuro, en lugar de hacerlo de la plusvalia de trabajo productivo presente. En el caso de China, el Estado está plantándose, y ahora tiene que enderezar para que el modelo se organice en torno al Trabajo  (por delante del Capital)

De todos modos, para China, el camino está claro; crear un Estado socialista de bienestar al mismo ritmo que lo hicieron para la acumulación de capital empresarial, Lo harán, incluso reactivando  imperialismo geopolitico, pero que no será el mismo que el se desarrolló en el XVII-XIX con el modelo colonial,

Quien no lo tiene nada claro, es USA y el modelo occidental, porque para salir  del imperialismo colonial,  lo que se hizo  fue ponerse a explotar a los propios hijos. Salir de ese imperialismo es otro cantar, No creo que se pueda conseguir deconstruyendo simplemente la identidad occidental (que es la del Helenismo) sin antes formular preguntas que surjan de esta misma raiz. Igual el propio Helenismo es el que está gestando nuestras contradicciones; por eso gozamos con el infanticidio sublimado en trend bursátil, y no concebimos otra forma de gozar. Estamos en la fase pedófila del Capitalismo,

En los dos modelos, sea el Chino o el Capitalismo popular occidental, lo que me llama la atención es que nadie da una solucion conceptual coherente a las burbujas inmobiliarias,

Porque hace 40 años que sabían lo que estaban haciendo, Por tanto sabían que la servidumbre de sus propios hijos no podía tener ni tiene más futuro que el de los pueblos colonizados, También es verdad que aún se supera el ciclo de un vida (casi, con los nacidos en los 50). Pero ahora entramos en un mundo donde ya nada se olvida, Nada, Y todo cabe un minúsculo disco USB

(click to show/hide)

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/22/opinion/china-bubble-economy.html

https://dnyuz.com/2021/10/22/is-china-in-big-trouble/

Is China in Big Trouble?, Paul Krugman

These are scary times in America, with one of our major parties careening into authoritarianism and the other having difficulty moving forward thanks to two uncooperative senators. Most of what I write, inevitably, focuses on the troubled prospects for our republic. But everyone needs a break. So today I want to talk about a happier topic: The risks of an economic crisis in China.

OK, not exactly happier. But a change in subject, anyway.

Warnings about the Chinese economy aren’t new — but until now the worriers, myself included, have been consistently wrong. Back in 2013 I suggested that China’s growth model was becoming unsustainable, and that its economy might be about to hit a Great Wall; obviously that didn’t happen.

Yet the more closely you look at how China has been able to keep its economy going, the more problematic it looks. Basically, China has masked underlying imbalances by creating an immense housing bubble. And it’s hard to see how this ends well.

The background: The reforms introduced by Deng Xiaoping at the end of the 1970s created an economic miracle. China, which was desperately poor, is now a middle-income nation, and given its size, that makes it an economic superpower. But China’s economic growth has been gradually slowing. Here’s a five-year moving average of the country’s growth rate:


There’s nothing mysterious about this slowdown. China was able to achieve incredibly rapid growth through a combination of technological borrowing from more advanced nations and a huge transfer of population from rural areas to cities. As its technological sophistication grew and the reservoir of rural labor shrank, growth was bound to slow. In addition, the one-child policy gave China the kind of demography we usually associate with richer countries: The working-age population peaked a few years ago and is now shrinking:


In and of themselves, slower growth and a demographic transition needn’t imply a crisis. But here’s the problem: Chinese spending patterns haven’t adjusted to the needs of a slower-growth economy. In particular, the country still has a very high savings rate, so to maintain full employment it needs to invest an incredibly high share of G.D.P. — more than 40 percent.

What drives investment? Normally, it depends a lot on how fast the economy is growing: growth is what creates a demand for new factories, office buildings, shopping malls and so on. So very high investment as a share of G.D.P. is sustainable if the economy is growing at 9 or 10 percent a year. If growth drops to 3 or 4 percent, however, the returns on investment drop. That’s why China really needs to change its economic mix — to save less and consume more.

But Chinese savings have stayed stubbornly high — and yes, excessive saving is an economic problem.

A few years ago a study from the International Monetary Fund tried to explain high Chinese savings. It suggested that the biggest culprit was the same demographic transition that is one cause of slowing growth: A declining birthrate means that Chinese adults can’t expect their children to support them later in life, so they save a lot to prepare for retirement. This demographic factor is reinforced by the weakness of China’s social safety net: People can’t count on the government to support them in their later years or to pay for health care, so they feel the need to accumulate assets as a precaution.

Chinese policymakers know all this, but somehow haven’t been able to deal with these underlying issues. Instead, they’ve kept the rate of investment very high despite slowing growth — mainly by encouraging huge spending on housing construction. A 2020 paper by Kenneth Rogoff and Yuanchen Yang shows that Chinese investment in real estate now greatly exceeds U.S. levels at the height of the 2000s housing bubble, both in dollar terms and as a share of G.D.P.:


Rogoff and Yang also show both that housing prices in China are extremely high relative to incomes and that the real estate sector has become an incredibly large share of China’s economy.

None of this looks sustainable, which is why many observers worry that the debt problems of the giant property developer Evergrande are just the leading edge of a broader economic crisis.

I’ve already pointed out that until now China has been able to defy the doomsayers. So you might be tempted to give Chinese policymakers the benefit of the doubt, and assume that they’ll manage to deal with this situation. It turns out, however, that they haven’t really been dealing with their economy’s underlying problems, they’ve been masking those problems by creating a housing bubble that will ultimately magnify the problem.

But why should the rest of the world care? China, which maintains controls on the flow of capital into and out of the country, isn’t deeply integrated with world financial markets. So the fall of Evergrande isn’t likely to provoke a global financial crisis in the same way that the fall of Lehman Brothers did in 2008. A Chinese slowdown would have some economic spillover via reduced Chinese demand, especially for raw materials. But in purely economic terms, the global economic risks from China’s problems don’t look all that large.

China does, however, have an autocratic government — the kind of government that in other times and places has tended to respond to internal problems by looking for an external enemy. And China is also a superpower. It’s not hard to tell scary stories about where all this might lead.

And with that, I return you to your regular worries about what’s going on in the United States.

[AbiertoPorDemolicion]

Felipe VI anima a los jóvenes a quedarse en los pueblos y luchar por su futuro
https://www.elperiodicodearagon.com/espana/2021/10/23/felipe-vi-anima-jovenes-quedarse-58728735.html

El Rey ha animado a los jóvenes a permanecer en los pueblos, a hacer del entorno rural su modo de vivir y a transformar "los obstáculos y dificultades en posibilidades de futuro".

Y mientras entretienen a los jovenes pueblerinos haciendo tarrinas de miel, mermelada de cerezas o montando casas rurales...

¿Vale el turismo para mitigar la despoblación rural? ¿Espejismos o Tendencias?
https://www.hosteltur.com/comunidad/004662_vale-el-turismo-para-mitigar-la-despoblacion-rural-espejismos-o-tendencias.html

El turismo por sí solo, no será capaz de reducir la despoblación rural y eso es algo indiscutible para cualquiera que conozca algo la ruralidad y su problemática, ya que es una actividad muy estacional y poco competitiva con otras ofertas turísticas como el litoral o la urbana.

la vida sigue...

Lideramos la atracción de inversión extranjera en 2020 con el 75% del total nacional
https://www.comunidad.madrid/noticias/2021/03/22/lideramos-atraccion-inversion-extranjera-2020-75-total-nacional

La Comunidad de Madrid ha liderado la atracción de inversión extranjera en España durante 2020 con 17.910 millones de euros, lo que representa el 75,2% del total nacional -23.823 millones de euros-, según los últimos datos hechos públicos hoy por la Secretaría de Estado de Comercio del Ministerio de Industria, Comercio y Turismo. En el mismo período, Cataluña ha recibido el 12,5% del total, País Vasco el 3,6%, Andalucía el 3,2 % y la Comunidad Valenciana ha cerrado 2020 con el 1,4%.

Con respecto a 2019, el aumento de la inversión en la Comunidad de Madrid ha sido del 23,6%. Un dato significativo a la vista de que en España la cifra global descendió un 0,8% o que en Cataluña la disminución alcanzó el 22,7%.

En cuanto a los principales países inversores en la Comunidad de Madrid hay que destacar Luxemburgo, con el 33,7% del total, Suiza (18,5%), Reino Unido (14,2%) y Francia (9,3%). Los principales sectores donde ha recaído la inversión extranjera a lo largo de 2020 han sido las actividades auxiliares a los servicios financieros (15,3%), telecomunicaciones (12,1%), servicios financieros (9,5%) y construcción de edificios (7,2%).

Parece que todo el dinero que sale de España hacia Suiza y Luxemburgo, para evitar la fiscalización y el control de las autoridades, está retornando a España.... ¿a España? No a toda...

El dinero que nos roban a los españoles (a todos), y que por los circuitos de los paraisos fiscales hacen el viaje de España-Luxemburgo-Suiza...para retornar otra vez en España, no se distribuye por igual por todo el territorio nacional. El latrocinio se reparte de forma uniforme, pero la repatriación se concentra en un solo territorio: el que tiene la hegemonia y el pie en el cuello sobre el resto de España.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.thelykeion.com/the-european-energy-crisis/

[
*S&P Platts (provider of energy info) puts it clearly, with a German example – from 2020 to 2026, Germany will go from a net exporter of 19TWh of energy to a net importer of 55TWh due to the decommissioning of nuclear and coal sources.

*While that's a common trend across European countries, France, with its nuclear-intensive grid, will instead almost double its net exporting capacity from 46 TWh to 84 TWh. Even though this is a concern for many countries that are decommissioning coal and nuclear, we see it as potentially the right approach to ensure a smooth transition from a fossil-fuel-based to a renewable-based society.

Dudo mucho que FR multiplique por 2 la producción nuclear para suministrar a Alemania, Están delirando.
Las centrales de FR están en fin de vida y paradas técnicas (por la prensa, no sé más).
Se oyen voces de que los alemanes se van a morder los dedos en pocos años.  En Alemania empiezan a reaccionar también

Luego está que la liberalizacion de los contratos de electricas privadas van camino de ser todos revertidos a la Cia nacional, por las subidas de precios. La energia no es una cotizacion de Bolsa,

A eso súmale la politica del coche electrico. Que no tiene recorrido porque no hay energia electrica suficiente, El único cambio que quedará será la peatonalización de ciudades, Pero la gente que va a trabajar no va a ir en bicleta, El PS galo (la alcaldesa de Paris) corre riesgo de quedar por debajo de la barra del 5% y no tiene visos de aspirar a la presidencia, La izquierda luminosa y woke se están derrumbando, Borrada del mapa electoral,

Intentaré fijarme  en la politica eléctrica de FR a ver si traigo datos

En la web de la World Nuclear Association tienen una página dedicada a la energía nuclear en Francia que en este momento está actualizada a enero de 2021.

De los titulrares de la web:

• Francia obtiene alrededor del 70% de su electricidad de la energía nuclear, debido a una política de larga duración basada en la seguridad energética. La política del Gobierno es reducirla al 50% para 2035.
• Francia es el mayor exportador neto de electricidad del mundo debido a su bajísimo coste de generación, y gana más de 3.000 millones de euros al año por ello.
• El país ha sido muy activo en el desarrollo de la tecnología nuclear. Los reactores y, sobre todo, los productos y servicios relacionados con el combustible tienen un peso importante en sus exportaciones.
• Alrededor del 17% de la electricidad de Francia procede de combustible nuclear reciclado.

Hablando de cifras totales en cuanto a reactores, Francia tiene:

• 56 reactores en operación
• 1 reactor en construcción
• 14 reactores apagados (12 se cerraron entre 1973 y 2010, y los otros dos en 2020)

Según la web comentada anteriormente, el tiempo de vida medio de los 56 reactores nucleares franceses que se encuentran actualmente en operación es de unos 35 años. Los reactores nucleares se diseñan con un tiempo de vida útil previsto de un mínimo de 40 años, pero la vida útil de una central nuclear se puede extender fácilmente a los 60 años (en EE.UU. ya hay cuatro reactores que han solicitado permiso para operar hasta 80 años).

En España no hay un límite establecido "a priori" para ninguno de los reactores que se encuentran en operación, que se alargue más o menos su vida depende de la rentabilidad que esperen obtener las compañias que los operan.

Este artículo publicado en Xataka en 2018 explica muy bien lo anterior:

Derribando el mito de los 40 años de vida de una central nuclear: vida útil frente a vida de diseño

Sobre las paradas "técnicas", entiendo que se refieren a paradas para realizar recarga de combustible.

Las centrales nucleares suelen parar cada 12-24 meses para recargar combustible (*). En cada parada de recarga, que dura alrededor de un mes, aparte de la recarga propiamente dicha (se reemplaza alrededor de 1/3 del combustible del reactor), se aprovecha para realizar tareas de mantenimiento y mejora de las centrales. Por ejemplo, el día 18 de octubre se inició la parada de recarga de Ascó I y en esta parada tienen 15.000 tareas planificadas que realizar.

Aparte de la parada de Ascó I este otoño tenemos planificadas la parada de otras dos centrales en España:

Veremos a ver como afecta eso a la subida del precio de la electricidad a mitad de noviembre, cuando falten en el famoso pool esos 3 MWe que generan entre las tres centrales nucleares.

Pero, volviendo al tema de los cierres, según parece, lejos de abandonar la nuclear Francia va a seguir apostando por ellos, al menos a corto plazo:

https://twitter.com/OperadorNuclear/status/1447921182167212049

https://twitter.com/OperadorNuclear/status/1450756296844664837

De hecho hasta se a ofrecido a ayudar a Polonia a construir seis reactores nucleares de tipo EPR (European Presurized Reactor) que es un tipo de reactor de tercera generación capaz de generar 1.6 MWe y que ha sido desarrollado conjuntamente por Francia y Alemania

https://twitter.com/W_Nuclear_News/status/1448674014562500612

A partir de los datos publicados en esta página de la World Nuclear Association he elaborado esta tabla en la que se puede ver como está ahora mismo el tema de la nuclear a nivel mundial con datos actualizados a octubre de 2021:

Reactores nucleares mundiales y requerimientos de uranio
(octubre 2021)

Como se puede ver, en España contamos con 7 reactores de segunda generación (6 de tipo PWR y 1, el de Cofrentes, BWR) que generan alrededor de 1 MWe cada uno.

Según los planes actuales estarán cerrados para 2035.

Imagen del día: España dejará de ser nuclear en 2033

Saludos.

(*) En España: 12 meses en Trillo (Siemens), 18 meses en Almaraz, Ascó y Vandellós II (Westinghouse) y 24 meses en Cofrentes (General Electric).

[Derby]

https://www.ft.com/content/36f0b102-b9a0-4f52-96b3-fc3a51729375

https://swiftheadline.com/inflation-pressure-now-brutal-because-of-supply-squeeze-us-companies-say/

Inflation Pressure Now ‘Brutal’ Because Of Supply Squeeze, US Companies Say

Shortages throughout the supply chains on which corporate America depends are translating into widespread inflationary pressure, a string of US companies revealed this week, disrupting their operations and forcing them to raise prices for their customers.

Whirlpool on Friday blamed “inefficiencies across the supply chain” for “pretty brutal” increases in prices for steel, resin and other materials, saying these would add almost $1bn to the appliance manufacturer’s costs this year.

“On any given day, something is out of stock in the store,” said Vivek Sankaran, chief executive of Albertsons, likening the grocery chain’s efforts to respond to successive challenges to a game of Whac-A-Mole.

Asked this week which ingredients and supplies Chipotle had found difficulty securing, Jack Hartung, the restaurant chain’s chief financial officer replied: “All of them.”(...)